Having spent a lot of time and energy developing some understanding and experience of multiple camera synchronisation for my 16-camera 'bullet time' shoot (Human Locomotion Project), it was very exciting to have a chance to problem-solve a commercial job with a multiple-camera solution. Rather than 16 cameras in a studio environment, this time it was just 4 cameras we had a wrangle, but on a city rooftop!

My client needed to show the views across the Adelaide skyline for the promotional launch of a new city highrise residential development. The images needed to be able to be projected large onto 4 massive screens surrounding a rooftop bar set in a city theatre. The idea was that the guests could exerience an immersive highrise city view whilst sipping cocktails at ground-level. Rather than just 4 spectacular still views I suggested a timelapse of the 4 views, synchronised so that wherever you looked in the theatre you'd see an authentic simultaneous view. They loved the idea, so we got onto making it happen. After scouting a few rooftops, we decided on one that offered easy and simple access, power, and excellent views.

Above is a snap of some of our kit bags on the rooftop. We hired 4 Canon 5D Mark IIs from Urban Cine, who were brilliant at sourcing the 16mm focal length lenses we needed across the 4 cameras. We also hired 4 sturdy tripods with spirit levels, which in the end proved so tricky to set up it took longer to set up the tripods than streamlining the settings on all 4 cameras! After fiddling for ages with the tripods in the ever-changing lighting conditions I just couldn't wait to start shooting! I set the cameras up at 100 ISO shooting in Aperture Priority mode to maintain a consistent and stable image across the timelapse, set at f16. Using the Grid overlay in live view I was able to get the horizon line reasonably similar from 4 quite distant positions on the rooftop. I have to admit that when we first started planning the shoot it was going to be from a crane suspended above the city (wow!!) but I was worried about the stability of the crane (I'm guessing it might wobble in the wind?) and it required some days of induction and we couldn't afford the time. So what was going to be a 360 degree pivotal panorama turned out to be 4 quite remote viewpoints.

The camera synchronisation was achieved using a custom built controller. Peter Stanley from Kranium designed and built the cotroller so be very easy to use, allowing us to reset the duration between shots as we worked. We started with a 2-minute interval (I wanted to shoot with 20s intervals but the client didn't want hundreds of images because they were going to be run manually with image fades using some kind of VJ equipment). and ended up with a 5 min interval at night to accommodate the much longer shutter speeds that resulted. The controller was absolutely brilliant, positioned centrally on the rooftop with 10m cables to the various cameras. The 4 5Ds were synchronised this way, and I also ran 2 Nikons using the built-in intervalometer in the D700 to get a more ambitious timelapse.

Above is the timelapse shot with a D700. The Canon images were delivered to the client in 4 folders with corresponding filenames and were projected successfully on the night. I have been sent some documentation from Rann Communication who did the event management, so here are some shots from the event (photographer: Bryan Charlton). The set design is by the brilliant Morag Cook, and the event is the Mandala Developments party!

So, here are the images synchronised into a little timelapse on the one screen. This was done in Adobe Premiere and was really simple to achieve - so I am encouraged to do a lot more with this simple technique to generate a multiple-viewpoint timelapse as a panorama. Now, I just need more clients to tackle multiple camera work to continue exploring and experimenting with what can be achieved for a very reasonable cost!

Thanks to Peter Stanley for technology development and assisting! Thanks to Urban Cine for their continued support of my multiple camera projects. Thanks to Morag Cook for believing in me :)